Being Sidetracked – Part 1

So I have to hurry up.

While the junior DevOps engineer was programming aloud, I paid attention to all the steps he took. He used Test Driven Development. It is a cycle of Red, Green, and Refactor.

A small recap: he first made a tiny test, which failed. Red is a favourite colour for failing. Then he made code to let this failing test succeed. Green is that other favourite colour for DevOps, testers, and especially managers.

Then he refactored the code. The code became more maintainable and readable. Even for a tester not fluent in Java.

The first test was to check, whether a business rule failed. He wrote only code to let the test succeed.
Before I could think, the method was ready. It had only one return statement with 1 fixed value.

But this would only be the case for very specific situations. I showed my disbelief and he answered that the code had to pass the new test. Right, you are right.

This was a strange situation for me as a tester with a traditional background. Tests should be executed after the implementation and not before. Somehow my brain had pushed the theory about TDD aside. It felt so unnatural to me that I unconsciously switched back to Program First Test Next.

Anyways, the DevOps had a quick look to the code. I did not think that this could be refactored. One line single statement cannot be refactored.
Yes right again. The first cycle was finished. Red Green Refactor.

A return value from a method is like an answer from a human being. What the DevOps basically asked, was: “Is this value right?”
And the method would always answer with “Yes.”

This was strange to me. Now I realised, that this was the most minimal addition to the program.
Without a method the code would have be repeated multiple times and maintained at the same number of places. A recipe for disaster.

Aw I forgot to look in the right low box in the left corner in the room under the stairs.

Now programmers have a small heuristic for this one:
DRY. Don’t Repeat Yourself.

The fact that the answer was always “Yes”, bothered me. While blogging I remembered asking a restaurant in China, whether they could speak English. The answer was “Yes.” My wife and I were delighted until I ordered. O no.